Versus Mode: Demos

Recent data out of the MI6 video game conference appears to show that demos may actually hurt sales of games across the board.

Of course, the data itself is slightly misleading. After all, what major game release gets a demo and not a trailer?

Potentially deceptive evidence aside, plenty of developers have passed on a demo release recently, for reasons ranging from cost of production to unrepresentative gameplay. What would happen if publishers began to cut down even more on demos? Would that be a good thing--from either the consumer standpoint, or that of the industry?

Fellow Shacknews editor Aaron Linde and I have two very different opinions on the matter, and thus, we were forced to do combat.

Nick Breckon: Publishers ignoring the importance of demos would be a terrible mistake.

Aaron Linde: You are so wrong.

Nick Breckon: No, you are.

Listen Aaron, I can count on six hands the number of games that I've bought based on a good demo. This isn't some illusory phenomenon that doesn't exist, like PC piracy. Demos work.

If the industry were to generally phase out demos, it would be a slap in the face--not in a nostalgic sense, but purely from the standpoint of a consumer.

If you haven't noticed, a game is $60 these days--$60 goddamned dollars. This isn't a movie, where a decent trailer is enough to warrant a $10 investment. We're talking 60 trips to the dollar store here. That's flushing a lot of porcelain ducks down the drain without ever getting your hands on the thing ahead of time.

Bookstores allow you to demo printed material. Music stores allow you to play bits of tracks at your leisure. For the gaming industry to strong-arm consumers into making blind purchases seems counter-productive to me. Are they trying to encourage rentals or resales? Are they looking to prop up piracy even more? How does that help their business?

Of course you can make the argument that great games don't need demos to sell, and terrible games are hurt by them. This ignores the fact that most games released today don't fall into either of those extreme categories.

I know what you're going to say. I know you're going to be all, "But Nick, what about that Skate demo you played 56 times? Ever buy that game, Nick? Ever give EA any cash for that?"

No, I never did. That is a fine example of a game that just barely didn't warrant a purchase for me. But the thing is, I certainly wasn't going to buy it without having played the demo, either. EA loses nothing in such a situation.

You can take my flight sims, but you can never take my demos.

Aaron Linde: Nick, I hate you so much. So, so much.

You know what the best use of a demo is? Satisfying my unbridled desire for a work in progress in which I've already invested a great deal of interest. The last demo that I played was for BioShock, a game I was already hung up on purchasing, and had already done a fair bit of research on.

I'm not going to suggest that demos aren't useful, because they are. They avail more options to the consumer and make decisions easier in an industry where a $60 mistake can burn like a motherfucker. I know all too well--I purchased Assassin's Creed, after all. But industry-wide delirium notwithstanding, there's so much coverage and so much information out there that you have to make a significant effort to buy a game knowing virtually nothing about it.

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Aaron Linde (cont.): A lot of big name titles like Fallout 3 and Gears of War 2 won't be featuring demos, and I'm okay with that. It takes a shitload of time, effort and money to craft a demo, and often requires extensive tweaking to make it work in a standalone setting, and that's work that I'd rather go towards polishing the game. Dumping budget into a demo rather than development proper is like dumping budget into expanded marketing, which is something I could do without.

We and our audience are locked in and switched on--we know which sources we trust, and which opinions to ignore. Hell, your vote of confidence is enough to get me interested in a game. If you hit up a preview event and tell me that a game is solid gold, the lack of a demo isn't going to break my heart.

Nick Breckon: You trust people like us to tell you what to buy? What a sucker you are, Linde.

I don't trust anyone when it comes to reviews, and not because of any inane Gerstmann-derived piety. I am far quicker to trust my friends, or the word of the people, than any paid amateur. And what gets a game into the hands of the people easier than a demo?

You are still ignoring the average consumer, the guy who doesn't follow this silly industry like your sister follows Britney Spears. Who has time to read a dozen fifteen-page reviews before committing to a purchase? In the absence of a demo, that average guy is far more likely to base his decision on the back of a box, a trailer, or worse--his GameStop manager.

But let's focus on trailers for a moment. That MI6 data may seem revelatory, but is in reality academic. Of course trailers sell more games--they are carefully edited for maximum whiz-bang effect, and also happen to be conveniently detached from the actual gameplay experience by nature. Whereas a movie trailer is always a short form of the full product, a game trailer is a movie of a game being played, an entirely different ball of wax. Game videos can be anywhere from a montage of unrepresentative cutscenes, to downright misleading footage.

Demos never lie.

And though I acknowledge that a demo could only hurt the sales of a bad game, with so many games coming out, I would never give most of them a shot without first personally playing them.

Let's change gears for a moment and enter the realm indisputable fact--PC demos are absolutely essential. In an age of ridiculous system requirements and a waning hardcore base, demos must be provided to help ensure gamers that their systems won't croak after loading the game up for the first time. To ignore this would be to damage the industry itself, biting the hand that feeds any publisher still trying to make money on the platform. Providing a free alternative to PC piracy is even more important.

But I digress. At the end of the day, it really is this simple: playing games before buying them is important to me as a consumer.

Do you know how many games I've bought purely on hype, based on reviews and pure gamer reflex, only to set them aside after the first hour? How I wished for demos, then.

Again, I return to the book business. Imagine if bookstores put all of their wares behind plate glass, and book publishers forced you to watch spoken-word trailers and developer author interviews in order to make up your mind. The only way to decide on a novel purchase would be to read a review, or wait for a friend to buy it. Seems absurd, doesn't it? And yet the most expensive hardcover costs half that of a typical game.

Why should we as gamers put up with that? Because demos cost developers a little extra money and time to produce? How much slack do we really owe these guys at $60 a pop?

Aaron Linde: I see what you're getting at, but I keep stumbling over the piles of stupid you've been crapping on this argument's direction like a saddled horse.

Of course they're vital for PC gaming for the reasons you mentioned, but virtually every major release has a demo either before or after on the PC for that reason. If only for their technical utility, I'd be shocked if PC gaming shifted away from demos--but on a uniform console, it's a bit of a gray area. Console demos are purely about test-driving the product rather than observing your system's ability to run it.

To that end, I absolutely agree that demos are good for the consumer at every level, from the newly-converted to the aging, irrelevant gaming journalists like you and me. But what I'm getting at is this: if the industry moves towards releasing less and less playable demos for upcoming titles, I don't think anybody is going to be left out in the cold. It's not that hopeless.

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Aaron Linde (cont.): It's a bad idea to blindly follow a reviewer when selecting a game, or for that matter any single source of information--and that includes demos. Demos never lie? Bitch, please. Demos can be some of the shadiest goddamn liars you've ever encountered.

Take Crackdown, for example. After thirty minutes with the demo, I was absolutely sold. Sold! It was a wonderful experience until I played the full game, and found that all I did was.. well, exactly what I had done in those thirty minutes, repeated over, and over, and over, and over. Just as reviews can be biased, demos can be horribly misleading.

And I don't give a shit if you're an average consumer or a hardcore gamer: If you're dropping $60 on a single game, yes, you should do more research than simply relying on the availability of a playable demo. Just like you'd likely put in a bit of time to buy anything that cost more than what you make in an hour--it makes good sense. Sure, a playable demo might be the best form of research, but it's not the only form of research.

But for a lot of the average consumers you're speaking of, homework of any variety isn't exactly a top priority. Even if demos of truly bad games are available, eventually some idiot is going to buy Chris Faylor's Gun Totin' Bitchslap Adventure and be disappointed. In a perfect world awash in demos, bad games would still be purchased. Iron Man is still going to sell a shitload.

As a consumer myself, it'd be self-defeating to argue that demos shouldn't be made by the reasoning that publishers and developers stand to gain from their absence, not the consumer. More options in selecting a title are important. But I've done well enough without demos for years, and it's not because I've been to preview events or Gamers Days; I look for consistency in development from particular companies, I know my own tastes and preferences, I listen to sources I trust. I'm not suggesting that anybody be blindly led by the first review they see of a game, not at all--but with all the information available, it's easy to make an informed choice.

Sure, it'd be patently absurd if bookstores wouldn't allow you to page through product on the shelves. But the analogy fails to address the simple technical differences in the media--that at the end of the day, it cost developers time and money to put together and release a demo on consoles. I'd like 'em to man up and do it anyway, to do the right thing for the consumer, but since when has that been a priority for this industry?

In the mean time, I'm sure we can kick up some grassroots activism, bitch on internet forums and kick up some thrilling petitiononline.com campaigns. But if the sea change moves in a direction where those who rely solely on playable demos are left without a means of previewing product, maybe it's time for a change of method. We did well enough before the era of Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, anyway.

The day we stop seeing playable demos will be a sad day. But it ain't the end of the world.

Nick Breckon: But. But. But it should be a priority for the industry. It just makes good business sense. You don't keep customers by keeping them in the dark. Even the backwards-oriented music business is starting to realize this.

Demos have always been a key part of this industry, a shining example of something that it does right.

Demos saved me from Trespasser, and delivered me unto Quake 2. A demo sold me on World in Conflict, and shied me away from Turok.

Who can forget flying around Wake for the first time in the Battlefield 1942 demo? Or discovering games like Sins of a Solar Empire? Where would id be without shareware demos? Would I have ever paid money for a game called LEGO Star Wars without having tried it first?

In fact, some of my most memorable gaming experiences were born out of demos. I met Manny for the first time in a demo. I blew up Shackers for the first time in the Soldier of Fortune 2 demo. I got through 9th grade computer class with the Quake III Arena demo.

And even the movie industry is toying with a more demo-like format, throwing up the entire opening scene of some films before they hit theaters.

I see your point. Some games don't lend themselves well to demos. Research is important. Conceded.

I still want--and in many cases, need--a demo in conjunction with another source of information. If a developer wants to compete for my money, they have to go the distance and figure out a way to let me try it first. I see demos as a necessary element in either case.

Aaron Linde: Yeah. Agreed.

Nick Breckon: How very logical of you, Mr. Linde.